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But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray;

Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge, And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway.

Suddenly all the sky is hid

As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow;

Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,
And the wind breathes low;

Slowly the circles widen on the river,
Widen and mingle, one and all;
Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver,
Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall.

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter,
The wind is gathering in the west;
The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter,
Then droop to a fitful rest;
Up from the stream with sluggish flap
Struggles the gull and floats away;
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,
We shall not see the sun go down to-day:
Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh,
And tramples the grass with terrified feet,
The startled river turns leaden and harsh,
You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.

Look! look! that livid flash!
And instantly follows the rattling thunder,
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,

Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,
On the Earth, which crouches in silence under;
And now a solid gray wall of rain

Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile;

For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And, ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof,

Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof;

Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge; Against the windows the storm comes dashing, So still the air that I can hear

The slender clarion of the unseen midge;

Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases, Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases. The huddling trample of a drove of sheep Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep, A confused noise between two silences, Finding at last in dust precarious peace. On the wide marsh, the purple-blossomed grasses Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide

Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side;

Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing,
The blue lightning flashes,

The rapid hail clashes,
The white waves are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar,
Like the toothless sea mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling
And crashing and crumbling, -
Will silence return nevermore?

Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still;

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In grateful silence earth receives
The general blessing; fresh and fair,
Each flower expands its little leaves,
As glad the common joy to share.

The softened sunbeams pour around
A fairy light, uncertain, pale;
The wind flows cool; the scented ground
Is breathing odors on the gale.

Mid yon rich clouds' voluptuous pile, Methinks some spirit of the air Might rest, to gaze below awhile,

Then turn to bathe and revel there.

The sun breaks forth; from off the scene
Its floating veil of mist is flung;
And all the wilderness of green

With trembling drops of light is hung.

Now gaze on Nature, yet the same,
Glowing with life, by breezes fanned,
Luxuriant, lovely, as she came,

Fresh in her youth, from God's own hand.

Hear the rich music of that voice,

Which sounds from all below, above;

She calls her children to rejoice,

And round them throws her arms of love.

Drink in her influence; low-born care,
And all the train of mean desire,
Refuse to breathe this holy air,
And mid this living light expire.

ANDREWS NORTON.

A DROP OF DEW.

SEE how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn

Into the blowing roses,

(Yet careless of its mansion new For the clear region where 't was born) Round in itself encloses,

And in its little globe's extent Frames, as it can, its native element. How it the purple flower does slight, Scarce touching where it lies; But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light, Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere; Restless it rolls, and unsecure,

Trembling, lest it grow impure, Till the warm sun pities its pain, And to the skies exhales it back again. So the soul, that drop, that ray

Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flower be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in a heaven less.

In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away;
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day.
Dark beneath, but bright above;
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go!
How girt and ready to ascend!
Moving but on a point below,

It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distill,

White and entire, although congealed and chill,Congealed on earth, but does, dissolving, run Into the glories of the Almighty sun.

ANDREW MARVELL,

A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION.
"One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine."-YOUNG.
"T is past,
the sultry tyrant of the South
Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful hours
Move silent on; the skies no more repel
The dazzled sight, but, with mild maiden beams
Of tempered luster, court the cherished eye
To wander o'er their sphere; where, hung aloft,
Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow,
New strung in heaven, lifts its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of softened radiance with her dewy locks.
The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve,
Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires
Through the Hesperian gardens of the West,
And shuts the gates of Day. 'Tis now the hour
When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierced woods, where rapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine,
Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven
Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether
One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling
fires,

And dancing lusters, where the unsteady eye,
Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined
O'er all this field of glories; spacious field,

And worthy of the Master, He whose hand
With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile
Inscribed the mystic tablet, hung on high
To public gaze, and said, Adore, O man !
The finger of thy God. From what pure wells
Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn,
Are all these lamps so filled?- these friendly
lamps,

Forever streaming o'er the azure deep

To point our path, and light us to our home.
How soft they slide along their lucid spheres,
And, silent as the foot of Time, fulfill
Their destined courses! Nature's self is hushed,
And but a scattered leaf, which rustles through
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard
To break the midnight air; though the raised ear,
Intently listening, drinks in every breath.
How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise !
But are they silent all? or is there not

A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun
(Fair transitory creature of a day !)
Has closed his golden eye, and, wrapt in shades,
Forgets his wonted journey through the East.
Ye citadels of light, and seats of gods!
Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul,
Revolving periods past, may oft look back,
With recollected tenderness, on all

The various busy scenes she left below,
Its deep-laid projects and its strange events,
As on some fond and doting tale that soothed
Her infant hours, O, be it lawful now
To tread the hallowed circle of your courts,
And with mute wonder and delighted awe
Approach your burning confines! Seized in
thought,

On Fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled earth,
And the pale moon, her duteous, fair attendant;
From solitary Mars; from the vast orb
Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk
Dances in ether like the lightest leaf,
To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system,
Where cheerless Saturn midst his watery moons
Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp,
Sits like an exiled monarch fearless thence
I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,
Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine
Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light
From the proud regent of our scanty day;

Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,
And only less than Him who marks their track
And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop,
Or is there aught beyond? What hand unseen
Impels me onward through the glowing orbs
Of habitable nature, far remote,

To the dread confines of eternal night,
To solitudes of waste unpeopled space,
The deserts of creation, wide and wild ;
Where embryo systems and unkindled suns
Sleep in the womb of chaos? Fancy droops,
And Thought, astonished, stops her bold career.
But, O thou mighty Mind! whose powerful word
Said, "Thus let all things be," and thus they

were,

Where shall I seek thy presence? how unblamed
Invoke thy dread perfection?

Have the broad eyelids of the morn beheld thee?
Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion
Support thy throne? O, look with pity down
On erring, guilty man; not in thy names
Of terror clad; not with those thunders armed
That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appalled
The scattered tribes; thou hast a gentler voice,
That whispers comfort to the swelling heart,
Abashed, yet longing to behold her Maker!
But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,
And seeks again the known accustomed spot,
Drest up with sun and shade and lawns and
streams,

A mansion fair and spacious for its guests,
And all replete with wonders. Let me here,
Content and grateful, wait the appointed time,
And ripen for the skies: the hour will come
When all these splendors bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown.

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD.

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Low on the utmost boundary of the sight,
The rising vapors catch the silver light;
Thence fancy measures, as they parting fly,
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
Passing the source of light; and thence away,
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.
For yet above these wafted clouds are seen
(In a remoter sky still more serene)
Others, detached in ranges through the air,
Spotless as snow, and countless as they 're fair;
Scattered immensely wide from east to west,
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
These, to the raptured mind, aloud proclaim
Their mighty Shepherd's everlasting name;
And thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of soul
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,
And loosed imagination soaring goes
High o'er his home and all his little woes.
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

A SUMMER EVENING.

How fine has the day been! how bright was the sun! How lovely and joyful the course that he run,

SEPTEMBER.

SWEET is the voice that calls From babbling waterfalls

Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun, In meadows where the downy seeds are flying;

And there followed some droppings of rain! But now the fair traveler 's come to the west, His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best : He paints the sky gay as he sinks to his rest, And foretells a bright rising again.

And soft the breezes blow,
And eddying come and go

In faded gardens where the rose is dying.

Among the stubbled corn
The blithe quail pipes at morn,

Just such is the Christian; his course he begins, The merry partridge drums in hidden places,

Like the sun in a mist, when he mourns for his sins,
And melts into tears; then he breaks out and

shines,

And glittering insects gleam
Above the reedy stream,

Where busy spiders spin their filmy laces.

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Ah, soon on field and hill
The wind shall whistle chill,
And patriarch swallows call their flocks together,
To fly from frost and snow,
And seek for lands where blow
The fairer blossoms of a balmier weather.

The cricket chirps all day,
"O fairest summer, stay!

The squirrel eyes askance the chestnuts browning;
The wild fowl fly afar

Above the foamy bar,

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THE latter rain, - it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste.
As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
But not a blade grows green as in the spring;
No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves;
The robins only mid the harvests sing,
Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves;
The rain falls still, the fruit all ripened drops,
It pierces chestnut-burr and walnut-shell;

And hasten southward ere the skies are frowning. The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops;

Now comes a fragrant breeze
Through the dark cedar-trees,

And round about my temples fondly lingers,

In gentle playfulness,

Like to the soft caress

Bestowed in happier days by loving fingers.

Yet, though a sense of grief

Comes with the falling leaf,

Each bursting pod of talents used can tell;
And all that once received the early rain
Declare to man it was not sent in vain.

AUTUMN.

JONES VERY.

THE warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing;

And memory makes the summer doubly pleasant, The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers

In all my autumn dreams

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